To the extent I agree with Solar, I cant agree up to the point of LA being worth crafting, golden gecko has 90sth -104 hp points comes with 2 golden geckos and couple geckos. Killing all of them spendig a lot of bullets for a burst weapon provides you with an armor that could be slightly effective against radscorpions, which is useless.
NPCs HP doubled and attack raised and armors remained or as in case of LA got higher requirements.
Simply, if youre not alting youll need to buy a better armor than LA or LAmk2 and a good smg to go to craft LA, which is useless against golden geckos. If the HP raised 2 times. The golden gecko skin req should decrease by half to 3